


Closing Davy Jones' Locker

by the_dala



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 17:13:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_dala/pseuds/the_dala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and Will find a way to say goodbye to Bootstrap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closing Davy Jones' Locker

**Author's Note:**

> I'm archiving my old PotC fic - this was originally published on December 5th, 2003. These earlier stories are compliant with CoBP canon only and somewhat rough compared to my later fic. But I like to do things in order, so I'm posting them chronologically.

 

“Jack.”

No answer, only a grunt as Jack continued tossing random items over his shoulder. Will ducked as a copper pot came close to braining him. _“Jack.”_

“What?” He tugged out a dirty, smudged mirror, inspecting his teeth and pulling faces at his reflection.

“I don’t understand why this is the first time you’ve gone through all of these things.”

Jack let the mirror fall down beside Will, little clouds of dust puffing up where it hit the deck. “Because none of my crew’s willing to come in here, that’s why. Said they’d not touch anything belongin’ to the _Pearl’s_ former master.”

“You couldn’t have done it yourself?” Will asked skeptically, accepting a massive purple overcoat. It was moth-eaten, with half its brass buttons missing, and it smelled of rotting vegetables. He set it down on top of the mirror with a grimace.

Jack half-turned, fixing him with a sheepish grin. “Actually, I forgot this compartment was here. From the looks of things –” He held up a reproduction of the Mona Lisa that had been bad long before water and wind discolored it. “So did Barbossa.”

“Please tell me you’re not going to keep all this.”

He shrugged. “Dunno, there’s markets for all kind of trinkets.”

Will tapped a yellow silk fan, stained with what looked suspiciously like blood, against the door of the hidden compartment. “These aren’t trinkets, they’re rubbish.”

With a sigh and a contemptuous twist of his shoulders, Jack said, “Fine, then, we’ll throw most of it over. But there’s got to be at least some as can be salvaged. Like these.” He shoved a few leather-bound books into Will’s arms. “And this.” On top of the books went a little clay dog – how it had escaped being broken in all that mess, Will had no idea.

Half an hour later the items had been sorted into a pile for keeps and a pile for dumping. The pile to be dumped was subsequently gotten rid of, and they took the rest down to the hold with the plunder from the _Pearl’s_ last raid.

Will thumbed through one of the books with half an interest. It was in decent condition and appeared to be some type of log, written in a spidery hand in faint blue ink that he had serious trouble deciphering. The spelling, of the little he could make out, was atrocious.

Jack peered around him. “Hello there,” he said, “I recognize that hand. It’s Barbossa’s.” He took the book from Will and held it by one cover at arm’s length, as though he expected it to come crawling up his arm.

“Barbossa kept the books?”

“The man had layers,” said Jack absently. Apparently having decided that the curse inflicted upon the former captain did not pertain to his written records, he brought the book close and squinted at a page. “Rain today. Crew miserable. Pulled through.” He flipped to the middle and read aloud again. “Sun and good wind today. Crew miserable. Bo’sun took Ragetti’s eye and threw it in the sea. Had to wait for three hours till he found it again. Discovered that it is pointless to flog two men that cannot feel pain. Bad for discipline; however, also rules out mutiny. Sunk a Dutch merchant vessel to boost morale and pulled through.” He found a new page. “No wind today. Attempted to eat Jack the monkey with the idea that flesh like me own would taste. Monkey was not amused; in any case, cannibalism quite messy. Pulled through, although still waiting for monkey’s forgiveness.” Jack closed the book, shaking his head. “And people say I’m mad.”

“You _are_ mad,” Will muttered under his breath. The day was dead quiet and hot, and he was not in a good mood after being covered in grime from the rediscovered compartment and its contents. He picked up another book and found it to contain the same thing as the first. As he flung it back down on the pile, he noticed a yellowed bit of paper fluttering down from its pages to the floor. He knelt to pick it up. It was just a few numbers, written in the same hand with the same blue ink. He frowned irritably. “Odd,” he accused it.

“What’s that?”

Will flung it at him. “This.” He found a pocket in Jack’s coat and used it as leverage to haul himself to his feet. “Aren’t we done here?” He noticed that Jack had gone still and was staring down at the scrap of paper in his hand. “Jack? What is it?”

Jack didn’t look up at him. His eyes had taken on that blank look he wore whenever he was hiding some feeling he thought it would be unwise to show.

“They’re coordinates,” he said. “Just a few miles away from my former place of residence – the little island on which Barbossa twice marooned me.”

Will failed to see the significance of this, and said so.

“Will,” said Jack, meeting his eyes with uneasy solemnity. “I believe this is where they sent your father to the depths.”

Will sat down hard, his gaze sliding down with him until it was level with the pile of rope he was facing. He stared resolutely at it, even after Jack’s face had been thrust down into his field of vision.

“Lad?” A hand decked out in flashing rings was waved in front of his face. “You all right?”

Closing his eyes, he nodded faintly. He felt Jack sit down beside him and put an arm across his shoulders. He let his head rest on Jack’s shoulder for a moment, breathing in the rum-and-salt scent of him and taking a strange sort of comfort in it. Then Jack cleared his throat heartily and each man drew back into his own space.

Will didn’t want to think about what that little touch meant – of course, he didn’t much want to think about his father either.

Jack spoke again, hesitantly, as if he feared his words would be rejected immediately.

“We could – we could go there. If you want. It’d take only a couple of days. I know there’s nothing for you to – I mean there’s no grave or –”

Will looked at him. “Do you want to go, Jack?”

“I – yes. Yes, I think I do.”

“Then we’ll go,” said Will softly.

“Don’t try and tell me we’re doing this for me,” Jack warned.

“No, it’s a good idea,” Will insisted. “We can have a sort of – memorial service. It will bring us closure.”

“It will bring _him_ closure,” Jack corrected him gently. Will nodded. He got to his feet, dusting his dirty palms off on his breeches, and pulled Jack up as well. For a second he held his grip on Jack’s hand, squeezing in thanks, before letting go.

~~~~~~~~

They made excellent time and were in the vicinity of the little island Jack had spent so much time lamenting earlier than expected. The sun had just set and Will clambered down from the crow’s nest, disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to see the spot in the daylight. Landing on the deck with a clomp, he found Jack at the helm, spyglass to one eye.

Will passed a hand in front of it just to bother him. He skipped nimbly out of the way as Jack leveled a half-hearted swing at him. “So this is it, then?”

“Well, t’ain’t no way we can know for sure, but this is the general area.”

He draped himself over the wheel with a sigh. “It’s dark.”

“Yes, that’s what happens when the sun goes away and the moon appears.”

Will scowled at him. “I guess we’ll have to do it now. In the dark.”

“Not necessarily,” said Jack, putting the glass back in its leather case and avoiding Will’s eyes. He pointed with both hands at the stretch of land on their starboard side. “I’ve always wondered what that island would be like when I didn’t have to watch me ship disappear on the horizon.”

“You want to sleep on the island.”

Jack rubbed his mustache thoughtfully, still not revealing much. Will hated it when he took a liking to being inscrutable. “P’raps.”

“What the devil for? You’ve been stranded there twice already.”

“Aye, but this time I wouldn’t be, would I? And there is a nice cache of brandy that I wouldn’t mind adding to the Pearl’s liquor store. We’d be making camp,” he added, puffing out his chest, a glint in his eye.. “We’d be like soldiers. Only without the poncy little wigs.”

Will rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say, Jack.”

“Of course whatever I say! I’m Captain Jack Sparrow! Now go grab a blanket, ‘less you fancy bein’ violated by sandcrabs in your sleep. I can tell you from personal experience that it’s not so pleasant as it sounds.”

~~~~~~~~

Will had to admit that Jack could come up with some pretty great plans. The fact that he thought so might have had something to do with the second empty bottle of rum in his hand, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

Jack tossed another log on the roaring fire, skipping and swaying to his own tune as he so often did.

“Do you know what your bonny lass did last time we was here? She burned it all! She burned the trees an’ the rum an’...an’...the _rum...”_ He flopped down in the sand at Will’s feet.

“She isn’t my lass,” said Will automatically, leaning back on his elbows to look at the stars.

Jack prodded him sharply in the upper part of his thigh. “Never did tell old Jack what happened.”

Will shoved him weakly away but it did no good, as he just leaned in again. Jack was a fan of invading others’ personal space. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I,” said Jack solemnly, drawing himself up to his full height sitting, “have the right to know these things. I’m your captain. Capitan, capitano, capitão. So tell.”

“I don’t _know!”_ Will shouted, waving an arm around and almost knocking himself in the head with the bottle. “We fought about the wedding plans, and she shouted, and I shouted, and finally she shouted at me so much that I up and left.”

“What did she shout?”

“That I – I wasn’t all there anymore. That I had a way of staring out a window that told her she wasn’t going to be enough for me. As if a man can control how he looks out of a sodding window!”

“I know that look,” said Jack, leveling an accusatory finger at him. “‘S why you’re here – or, not here, at present, ‘cause we’re on land and not at sea. But I _know_ she was right. _You_ know she was right. God knows _she_ knows she was right.”

Will blinked. Thinking about those last few sentences was more than his rum-addled head could handle at the moment. Instead he chose to leap – well, to lurch, really – forward and wrestle Jack to the ground. Jack held his liquor far better so he wasn’t quite as clumsy as Will, but he wasn’t really trying; he let Will pin him, truth be told, though Will told himself it was all due to superior might.

“Give?” he demanded, sitting on Jack’s stomach.

Jack gasped and flailed at him. “Give!”

“All right then,” said Will triumphantly. He rolled off Jack and onto his back next to him. Jack thumped him solidly on the chest in retribution. Will ignored the blow and turned his face to the fire. He wondered if Jack, lying on the other side of him and thus shielded from the blaze, was cold. Magnanimously he put an arm around Jack’s shoulders and pulled him in close. Jack murmured something unintelligble and turned his head to rest his cheek on Will’s shoulders. There, that should warm him.

“Jack,” he said, memory just now jogged by something Jack had said minutes earlier, “when you and Elizabeth were on this island together?”

“Hmmm.”

“Did you – did you kiss her?”

Jack snorted. “No. Much to my dismay, you can be sure.”

“Now we’re here, you and I, and it’s sort of the same – except we can leave whenever we want and I’m not about to go off burning things and of course I’m not a girl...” He trailed off as Jack raised up on one elbow to lean over him.

“No,” he agreed breathlessly, “you are not a girl. And I’m not about to make the same mistake twice.”

“What –” Will began before he was silenced by Jack’s mouth attacking his own.

The heat in his belly from the rum spread lower and outward, until it seemed to be running everywhere his body touched Jack’s. And considering that Jack was pressed closer to him than anyone ever had been – even Elizabeth, in their few stolen moments of passion – it was amazing that he hadn’t simply burst into flame.

He was so concentrated on the taste of Jack and the electric thrill racing through his blood that he spent a few seconds kissing air before he realized that Jack had pulled back. He was up on his knees and had begun crawling away, muttering, “no, no, no.”

_“Yes,”_ Will whispered, grabbing him around the waist and sending them both tumbling again. By the time they stopped rolling, luckily managing to avoid the fire, Will was on top, straddling Jack’s hips and drinking him in like he’d been dying of thirst.

“It’s...the rum,” Jack hissed out between kisses.

“No,” Will replied frantically, lips crisscrossing over Jack’s face, “it isn’t. Well maybe a little. But...”

“Sorry...shouldn’t have...we shouldn’t...”

“Please, Jack...need you...”

Jack groaned and struggled feebly underneath him, one last time. “You...you’ll hate me...in the morning.”

“I won’t, I promise – _Jack...”_ He gasped. Jack had gotten a hand in between their twisting bodies and was gripping Will between the legs.

“Promise you won’t hate me,” said Jack thickly.

“I won’t,” Will repeated with passionate conviction, and then his cries were buried in Jack’s skin, his moans lost to the crackling of the dying fire.

~~~~~~~~

“Ugh.”

It was the only thing Will could get out. His mouth tasted like stone and he could feel sand in places it definitely shouldn’t have been, no doubt due to the fact that he was lying half-off the blanket. Jack, of course, had the benefit of both the blanket underneath them and the one covering them. He was sprawled on his stomach with one arm thrown around Will’s waist, the bottom half of his face nuzzling Will’s shoulder. He twitched as Will wrangled a numb arm out from underneath his body, but did not otherwise move. Will knew from experience that Jack could sleep through cannonfire if he was properly tired – and judging by all that they’d been up to the night before, he certainly was at the moment.

A questioning squawk drew Will’s attention away from the sting of pins and needles in his newly freed limb. A small gray pelican squatted nearby, peering at them curiously.

“Hullo,” said Will, attempting to summon the energy to get up and failing. He did, however, discover that his head throbbed like it was trapped in a vise and the early morning sun, weak though it was, hurt his eyes terribly.

The pelican squawked again and waddled closer, stretching out its long neck to peck at the bone in Jack’s hair. Will chuckled as that finally got Jack awake. With a yell Jack sprang away, scrambling for his pistol and startling the pelican so badly that it took flight.

“Was that really necessary? It wasn’t hurting you.”

Jack shuddered. “I dislike animals. ‘Specially tropical birds that aren’t parrots. Carry all sorts of diseases...” He looked down at Will with a bit of suprise and wariness in his eyes, apparently just remembering what had transpired only a few hours ago. “So, you hate me then?”

Will stretched and yawned, wincing as his muscles and his head protested. “No, Jack, I don’t hate you. I hate that I can’t even begin to keep up with you when it comes to drinking, but I don’t hate _you.”_

“But I took advantage of you,” said Jack in a near-whine. “You were very drunk!”

“Oh, as if it would be the first time you’ve done such a thing,” Will scoffed, nudging Jack with a foot.

He looked mildly offended. “Exactly how many lads do you think I’ve bedded under the influence of alcohol?”

“At the very least, one more than me.” He pulled Jack down beside him and kissed his forehead. “Stop panicking,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to hate you, and I’m not going to leave you. Understand?”

Jack pursed his lips, giving Will a scrutinizing look. Will blinked blearily back at him, far too exhausted to argue further. After a moment he shrugged and got up, shading his eyes to find the Pearl just off the coast.

“We’d best be getting back. Can’t have those dogs sleeping late, now can we?” Grabbing the rest of his things, he struggled to dress on the move. Will paused to check that the fire was truly out before hurrying after him.

~~~~~~~~

It had been awhile since Will had just stood on deck and looked at the sea. After a few minutes his eyes adjusted to the sun’s glare off of the water and he could look comfortably, though his head still twinged a bit when he blinked. The water here was clear enough to see fish swimming distance down. On their way in they’d been escorted by a pod of dolphins, though now they were nowhere to be seen. Feeding, presumably. The thought of food turned Will’s stomach a bit and he focused on the water before him again.

Jack came up beside him, leaning over the side to peer down into the water slapping against the Pearl’s hull. “We’ve dropped anchor. Do you hate me yet?”

“I might consider it if you don’t stop asking,” said Will. He caught sight of a flask in Jack’s hand. “If you think I’m going to have any of that after –”

“Relax, mate, it’s not for fun. Here, I brewed you some tea – my own personal hangover recipe.”

Will sipped from the mug Jack handed to him and gagged. “This is awful!”

“Your fault for drinking past your limit, ‘specially with a bootleggers’ brew.”

“It tastes like seaweed.” Jack’s eyes darted to the side. “Jack,” said Will accusingly, “does it _have_ seaweed in it?”

Jack rolled a hand expressively on his wrist. “Just tip it back, ye coward. I guarantee you’ll feel better after.”

Holding his nose, Will obeyed. After coughing from the strong stuff, he found that his head had cleared considerably. “Thanks,” he said, impressed.

“Long years of necessity have perfected it,” Jack replied, slipping an arm around Will’s waist. Will ducked his head and smiled.

“So,” said Jack, “what shall we say?”

“I don’t know, you’re the one with the impressive powers of speech. You start.” Jack raised an eyebrow and he added, with a calculated expression of helplessness, “Please?”

Jack bit his lip and looked out at the water again. He swallowed a few times and said, raising the open flask, “To William Turner, known also as Bootstrap Bill, whose bones lie at the bottom of the sea in this spot. He was an excellent sailor, pirate, and friend.” He cast a glance at Will. “And would have been a good father, given more of a chance. As it were, he was lost before his time. His murder has been avenged, and today we honor his memory. G’bye, Bill. If I know you, you’re teaching’ the angels to sail and to come out on top in a knife fight.” He took a swig from his flask and poured the rest over the side, nudging Will. “Your turn.”

Will dug in his pocket for the small wooden vial he’d brought from England years ago.

“It’s dirt from my mother’s grave,” he explained to Jack, who nodded and gave him a squeeze.

He poured half of it into his palm, curling his fingers around it protectively. “To – to William Turner, a man I wish I could have known. To my father,” he whispered. He turned his hand over and released the earth, watching it fall down into the calm waters below. Releasing a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, he rested his head on Jack’s shoulder and closed his eyes, seeing the faint outline of a father he could scarcely remember against his lids.

“A fitting eulogy,” came Jack’s quiet voice. “He’d have been proud of you, lad.” He paused as though guarding his words carefully, afraid to give them away, before adding, “I’m proud of you.”

The glow Will felt had nothing to do with rum, or with lust, or with the sun gaining power as it rose in the sky. He leaned back into Jack’s embrace and said simply, “Thank you.”

They stood in comfortable silence for an instant before Jack shoved him forward. “Right then, we’d best get going. Start thinking of where you want to sail – I’m getting tired of starin’ at these same waters day in and day out. Let’s find a new horizon, savvy?”

Will grinned indulgently at Jack’s need to ruin the moment as he suffered a sudden attack of faith. He knew that there would be other moments, as surely as there would be other horizons. And he was certain that he'd found, by luck or fate or some combination of the two, just the person to share them with.

 


End file.
